THE TO-DO LIST:

The Failure of Communism in Vietnam (H.I.H. Prince Nguyen Phuc Buu Chanh of Vietnam, Regent of the Imperial Nguyen Dynasty, President of the Vietnamese Constitutional Monarchist League, November 26, 2004)

In 1990, the leading Communist official Tran Bach Dang told the author Stanley Karnow, "Our belief in a Communist utopia had nothing to do with reality. We tried to build a new society on theories and dreams--on sand. Instead of stimulating production by giving people incentives, we collectivized them. Imagine! We even collectivized barbers. It was preposterous. We were also consumed by vanity. Because we crushed the Americans, we thought we could achieve anything. We should have heeded the old Chinese adage: 'You can conquer a country from horseback, but you cannot govern it from horseback.'" Finally the Communists must look their failure in the face and confess their mistakes.

In a similar confession the unrepentant but realistic Dr. Duong Quynh Hoa, a high leader in the VietMinh, told the same author, "I have been a Communist all my life, but now I've seen the realities of Communism, and it is a failure--mismanagement, corruption, privilege, repression. My ideals are gone." In a later meeting she voiced the same outrage saying, "Communism has been catastrophic. Party officials have never understood the need for rational development. They've been hypnotized by Marxist slogans that have lost validity--if they ever were valid. They are outrageous." Few people deny that if Dr. Hoa had not been such a famous figure from the war against America she would have been arrested for making such statements. Even the famous Colonel Bui Tin, deputy editor of the Communist Party newspaper was forced by his conscience to confess the failure of Communism and the Socialist Republican government in Hanoi.

Colonel Bui Tin in particular pointed out the most alarming problems for Vietnam in his "citizen's petition". He said, "There is an alarming deterioration of traditional ethical, moral and spiritual values (and) confusion among the youth on whom the country's future depends." Remember that this man once fought for the vision of Marxism and Ho Chi Minh, and even he was forced to see the error of his youthful judgment. The same government he fought to create he now attacked as, "Bureaucracy, irresponsibility, egotism, corruption and fraud are becoming entrenched under an insolent reign of privileges and prerogatives," It is those exact same traditional values, ethical, moral and spiritual, which the Nguyen Dynasty and the Vietnamese Constitutional Monarchist League are determined to see restored and defended, so that the youth of Vietnam might have a better understanding of their nation and its cultural roots.

Looking at the world at large, and the many crimes of the Vietnamese Communist Party, all free people must condemn a government that allows such things to happen. There should be no place in the modern world for such tyranny, oppression and disregard for human dignity. If even the awakened members of the Communist Party can see their mistakes and voice their protests, surely the other free Vietnamese of the world must take the same step and join with the voice of the Great Nguyen Dynasty in calling for the end of dictatorship and the establishment of a new democratic government, based on Vietnamese traditions, that will assure the rights of its people and hold government officials accountable to those who elected them.